In January I set myself the target of writing 1 blog every Sunday. I failed to hit that mark by 1, on the very last Sunday of the month. Even though I had done some thorough research on the idea for my post I couldn’t seem to follow through with it. I didn’t feel like I was ready to write it, I didn’t feel like it was good enough. I didn’t feel like I was getting any better.
As had become my habit of my last few posts, I left writing to the evening of the deadline. Forcing myself to stick to that deadline was the only thing that kept me uploading consistently. As I wrote at the beginning of this year, we need to start new habits by simply showing up’.
But at some point, we hit a stumbling block. We don’t feel like we’re progressing. We conclude ” I’m bad at this and I am not getting any better, so it’s a waste of time”.
And this is the point at which most people give up.
In this post, I want to discuss what we can do when we hit this pivotal point.
Just showing up
The reality is that simply showing up won’t make you better at what you are trying to do. However, it is crucial because it’s the baseline from which improvement is made. Trying to improve without showing up is like expecting to build muscle by reading about the best techniques but never going to the gym. On the other hand, only showing up is like, expecting to build muscle whilst only doing the bare minimum every time you go to gym. Neither alone will produce the result you want.
Showing up + Deliberate Practice = Improvement
As I said, in order to start a skill, we should build the habit of showing up first, but if we want improve on that skill, then we need to perform deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice is different from regular practice. Regular practice is just repeating something over and over again mindlessly – usually without any useful feedback. Think of someone trying to learn guitar, but every practice session they just play the same scales, riffs, and songs that they’ve always done. They compound their mistakes and, even worse, they automatise the habit of this type of practice so it is a negative feedback loop.
Now contrast this to deliberate practice. A guitar player might isolate a particular area they are weak on, break it down and find ways to improve on it. They set out to practice it, evaluating the impact on their overall ability to play. They use feedback to test whether they are improving or not, maybe from themselves or maybe from a coach.
This leads of an obvious question? If we want to do deliberate practice, which parts should we focus on to begin with?
Focus on the Fundamentals
Obviously, it makes sense to start improving the most important areas first. The fundamentals. This is where coached/ guiding learning deviates from self directed learning.
Coached / Guided Learning
When we have a coach, or some syllabus to guide us, they can help direct our learning to focus on the fundamentals. What’s more, is that they can also give us immediate feedback. This is why basic tutorials can be super helpful when starting something new because they allow us to practice some of the fundamentals. The drawback of a coach/ tutorial is that by making these process easier, we don’t internalise our learning as effectively. As Sönke Ahrens puts it in ‘How to Take Smart Notes, p 88’:
“[Teachers] attempt to make learning easier for their students by prearranging information, sorting it into modules, categories and themes. By doing that, they achieve the opposite of what they intend to do. They make it harder for the student to learn because they set everything up for reviewing, taking away the opportunity to build meaningful connections.”
Therefore, if we are not careful this knowledge and skill can easily decay and be forgotten and all the time, effort and money we invested will be wasted.
Self-Directed Learning
For self-directed learners we have the opposite problem. Finding the focus of deliberate practice takes much more work, and oftentimes can lead to focusing on less important skills or even completely Irrelevant ones. However, when a self-directed learner does deliberately practise a fundamental skill, they get much more out it. Because it requires more work, they are more likely to remember it.
A Combined Approach.
An ideal approach is to try to combine both guided learning and self-directed learning. If we have a coach, then we should make sure we spend some time practising those fundamentals and expanding on them.
If a coach is not available, then we can research on the web or in books and look for repeatable themes that come up over and over again. These are likely to be related to the fundamentals of what we are trying to improve. In his book on rapid skill acquisition, the first 20 hours, author Josh Kaufman suggest:
For rapid skill acquisition, skimming is better than deep reading. By noticing ideas and tools that come up over and over again in different texts, you can trust the accuracy of the patterns you notice and prepare your practice accordingly.
Kaufman, Josh. The First 20 Hours (p. 29).
If In Doubt, Try A Short Experiment
Maybe we’ve skimmed some books and some articles, but we still can’t figure out where to start. Maybe we’re completely overwhelmed now. Maybe we feel even more lost than when we started. If that’s the case, we shouldn’t worry. Instead, we should try a short experiment. Here we can use our intuition as a barometer. We should pick something that we think might be important to what we want to learn. Then set aside some time each day to improve it. After a week we can review our experiment we can see if we have improved.
Back to My Blogging
There are many fundamentals that I need to work on in my writing, but the one I feel that I am struggling with the most is connecting my research with my ideas.
My current approach is to go through related books and underline a few paragraphs and then try to use them as the basis for my blog.
It might make sense to start with research first, but now I feel that I should develop my own ideas first.
If I start writing my idea first, I can then be reminded of the things I have researched. Then I decide whether they fit into my narrative. Plus, I can identify areas that are lacking and do some focused research and fill in the gaps – rather than trying to become an expert in the whole subject.
However, this is just a theory, so I am going to do a short experiment to see if it makes a difference.
My Challenge: A Blog A Day For 1 Week
Upload a blog post everyday, for 1 week. (3rd Feb – 9th Feb 2021)
Rough Plan:
- Start writing first from Am to Noon
- Edit in the Afternoon, limit to 4 O’clock.
- Publish
- Decide tomorrows subject.
- Evening – research and take notes.
If you read these posts, please leave constructive feedback. I would really appreciate it.
I know that my writing skills are far from good right now, and I have a long way to go but I hope that using deliberate practice and showing up every week, I hope to get better.
Resources Mentioned
How to Take Smart Notes: – By Sönke Ahrens
The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything … Fast by Josh Kaufman
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